1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to data processing apparatus and method. More particularly, the present invention relates to data processing apparatus and method for key-value pairs.
2. Descriptions of the Related Art
The form of key-value pairs is commonly used for data representation and data storage in computing systems recently. Regarding a key-value pair, the “key” portion is a label/key, while the “value” portion is a value corresponding to the label/key. For example, configurations of a computer may be stored in key-value pairs and one of them may be (“RAM”: 2 GB), which means that the RAM of the computer is of size 2 GB.
Although the form of key-value pairs provides flexibility for storing different kinds of information, users face the difficulties in processing the real data stored in key-value pairs. For example, when intending to perform a set operation, a user has to perform various queries at first and perform the desired set operations on the sets derived from the queries thereafter. Yet as another example, when intending to work on the values of key-value pairs, a user also has to perform various queries and/or set operations at first and work on the values of the result(s) of queries and/or set operations thereafter. It means that a user cannot work on the values of key-values set directly, not to mention performing a set operation and working on the values at the same time.
According to the above description, a data processing apparatus and method that can dealt with complicated queries and/or processes on key-value pairs is in an urgent need.